Great Power Army Reclamation

For this event, the two people studied for a long time, mainly because of its shock value. Because as students, there are many restrictions on conducting fundraising activities, so they must find suitable projects to implement their plans.

Charity is popular in the United States, and the vast participation shows that charity has a strong public base and social consensus in the United States. Many people believe that this is related to the history of the founding of the United States.

In 1620, the Mayflower carried 102 Puritans to North America and established the first colony here.

What they faced was a harsh winter and a lack of supplies. After traveling thousands of miles across the ocean, they found that there was no roof to cover their heads. The people in the New World felt the same in their hearts as in their bodies, which should be a relief from the cold.

It is said that "only six or seven relatively healthy people were left" at that time. However, these people "dedicated their true love to their fellow man willingly and without complaint, so that people could survive in the end." Therefore, there were many philanthropic practices in its early colonial history.

There are also corresponding organizations. After the Revolutionary War, the United States finally came into existence. However, although the war brought independence, it also brought various war traumas. There was a lot of waste waiting for improvement, and people paid more attention to charity.

Tocqueville noted that Americans during this period "demonstrated a universal sympathy." Charitable organizations appeared to help orphans, widowed mothers, and good prostitutes. Charity paid more attention to family relationships and those who were most in need of help.

Up to this point, philanthropic ideas and organizations were hardly modern.

From the last thirty years of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, there was a wave of charity. In 1889, Carnegie, a famous rich man at the time, published "The Gospel of Wealth" and uttered the golden words of wisdom "To be rich and to die is to be disgraced", which became the motto of many rich people at that time and even in later generations.

Rockefeller later pointed out earnestly, "The era has come when the rich are willing to use their wealth to give back to society."

In 1901, Carnegie spent $5 million to establish a relief and pension fund for steel workers, and donated money to build 68 libraries in New York City.

The Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were established in 1911 and 1913. By the time Carnegie died in 1919, he had become the most generous philanthropist in the United States, having donated a total of US$350 million.

It has donated and built 1,412 libraries in the United States and more than 2,500 libraries in English-speaking countries. Rockefeller "kept up his efforts" and continued to donate. Before his death, he became the largest philanthropist at the time.

It must be said that the modernization process of charity concepts and charitable organizations is inseparable from the modernization process of the economy and society.

This round of philanthropic upsurge and philanthropic modernization trend originated in 1873, when Mark Twain published a novel "The Gilded Age", describing this era as a rotten and social tearing behind the bubble of glitz and luxury.

By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the American economy and society had undergone tremendous changes. In 1894, the industrial output value of the United States reached 9.5 billion US dollars, which was twice the total industrial output value of the United Kingdom and more than three times that of France in the same year.

At the same time, American society underwent a dramatic transformation, rapidly transitioning from an agricultural society to an industrial society. The country has basically completed industrialization and urbanization, and immigrants are arriving in droves.

At that time, New York's population exceeded 10 million, making it the world's first megacity. However, the huge accumulation of material wealth has also triggered increasingly serious social conflicts. Social problems have emerged one after another and social conflicts have intensified.

In the era of industrialization, the gap between rich and poor has intensified, and the top 1% of households control more than half of the country's wealth. At this time, the United States experienced its highest rate of industrial accidents.

The main problems faced by the poor include difficulty in medical treatment, education, and housing. In 1914 and 1915, 35,000 and 22,000 new tuberculosis patients were recorded in New York City each year, respectively, with 8,918 deaths.

Their treatment cost a total of $687,342 in public and private health funds. Children are denied educational opportunities and often drop out of school at the age of 14 to work and support their families. It is also difficult for the poor in New York to find suitable housing. Due to low income and lack of security, they are often kicked out by landlords.

The turbulent reality has caused American elites to reflect and hope to alleviate social conflicts through institutional repair. Before they became philanthropists, Carnegie and Rockefeller were both famous "iron-fisted" and "cold-blooded" capitalists. The media called them "despicable" and "greedy".

Their "transformation", it must be said, is based both on pressure from society and reflection on the times.

In the mid-19th century, the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution and others showed that its philanthropic philosophy had shifted from simply helping the poor to solving social problems. In 1867, the United States had its first charitable foundation founded by an American, the Peabody Educational Foundation.

Philanthropic foundations began to support research into the root causes of social problems such as poverty, rather than fund superficial, temporary relief from the problems themselves.

Modern American charitable organizations began to rise under the background of this era. Beginning in the 1980s, American philanthropy began to rise again.

During this period, Reaganomics achieved great success in the United States. Starting from January 1983, the economy continued to grow for 92 months, with an average growth rate of 3.6%.

Although there was a brief economic crisis, the economy continued to grow for more than 120 months starting in April 1991, the unemployment rate dropped steadily, and the inflation rate dropped to below 2%.

The booming economy has made society more willing to engage in charitable activities, and with the rise of liberalism and the help of new technologies, "new rich" are constantly being born.

As a result, the number of charitable foundations has shown explosive growth. From 1980 to 1990, there were 4,117 new family charitable foundations, exceeding the previous total of 3,110. In the 1990s, the growth rate was even more astonishing, with 13,345 new companies added between 1990 and 2000.

Generally speaking, American philanthropy has a very deep social foundation and developed market mechanisms, so it has achieved greater influence and more impressive results.

From the perspective of the United States, the change in its philanthropic philosophy plays a decisive role in the prosperity of philanthropy, and it is also of fundamental significance to what we call the "third distribution."

The rise of charitable activities often occurs during periods of economic transformation. Some people "get rich first" while others fail to keep up. While the overall wealth of society increases, there is a trend of unfair distribution of wealth and polarization, which triggers Internal conflicts and divisions.

Therefore, as a supplementary function of distribution, charity activities have actually moved away from the early meaning of "rescuing emergencies" and "rescuing the poor" to "saving the world." For the giants of the "Gilded Age", it was tantamount to a reexamination and recognition of the meaning of life and their own social value.

In fact, the same is true for society. It is a change in distribution concepts and a change in values.

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